French cyber expert shows data leak on Koo app, company denies any breach

More than 3 million Koo users' data is at risk of getting compromised, if the company doesn't scale up the security now.

With the showdown between Twitter and India escalating with each passing day, several union ministries and related departments are moving to the rival micro-blogging platform Koo.

On Wednesday (February 10), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) used the Koo platform to react to the complaint against Twitter, sending a subtle message to the latter to comply with government orders.

So far, more than 3 million people have downloaded the Koo app on both Google Play (Android) and Apple App Store (iOS/iPadOS) ecosystem. It is also trending at number one in the social networking category overtaking WhatsApp, Facebook, and its messenger app in India on Apple App Store.

But, now, a report has emerged that the Koo app lacks a proper security firewall to protect the user details. Popular French cyber expert who goes the moniker Elliot Alderson on Twitter has revealed that Koo's security loophole can be misused to retrieve personally identifiable information such as e-mail ID, Date of Birth, Name, marital status, gender, and more.

Taking note of the issue, Aprameya R, co-founder, and CEO, Koo replied that the app is fully secured and the aforementioned data is available for all to see, as the users have made it public by choice on Koo.

"Some news about data leaking being spoken about unnecessarily. Please read this: The data visible is something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo. It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway, " said Aprameya R on Twitter.

Alderson replied with a screen-shot of an IAS officer on Koo and asked Aprameya, to show the person, has nowhere mentioned marital status on the app, but he has information on it.

To that, Aprameya replied-- "@fs0c131y (Elliot Alderson) We're attempting to do something for our country, India. All help is appreciated. If you want to help out in this journey of ours please write to me at [e-mail] and we can take a look at all the feedback you have. Thanks!"

Amid the surging registration on the Koo app, Aprameya and his team have their task cut out to scale up the security to ensure all the user data is protected at all cost and not end up being another Twitter-wannabe like Tooter or Mastodon.

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